‘We’ll check your phone records,’ DI Galvin said.
‘I dialled 1471 each time to get the numbers. I tried to call back but none of them would receive incoming calls.’
‘Phone boxes, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said the inspector. ‘Those don’t accept incoming calls any more.’
‘I wrote down the numbers,’ I said. ‘They’re on the back of the envelope that my gas bill came in. I left it on the counter in my kitchen.’
‘We’ll look into it,’ the inspector assured me.
Fine, I thought. Let someone else do the work. I was too tired.
16
Doctor Shwan came back to see me the following morning. The forty-eight hours was up and I hadn’t developed a fever. No infection.
‘What day is it?’ I asked him.
‘Wednesday.’
‘Where, exactly, am I?’
‘Critical Care Unit, University College Hospital, Euston Road.’
‘When can I go home?’
‘Soon.’ He smiled. ‘Good.’
‘What’s good?’ I asked.
‘You,’ he said. ‘You didn’t ask me questions like that on Monday because you were only interested in your body. Now you are well enough to think outside that. I think it’s time to remove all the monitors and tubes and send you to a regular ward.’
‘I want to go home,’ I said.
‘Not just yet,’ replied the doctor. ‘We still need to keep an eye on you for a while longer. Your body has suffered a considerable trauma and your breastbone needs to heal some more before you go running around, undoing all my handiwork.’
‘My breastbone?’
‘I had to saw it in half to get to your heart. I joined it back together with stainless-steel wire but the bone needs time to begin to bind naturally before you can put any stress on it.’
No wonder it hurt so much.
‘So when can I go home?’ I asked.
‘The earliest would be at the weekend.’
‘Friday?’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Saturday, maybe, but only if you continue to make good progress. And you must promise not to do anything strenuous for at least another three or four weeks. And no lifting anything heavier than a cup of tea. Your abdominal wall needs to heal as well.’
The doctor went away still chuckling to himself and, presently, a couple of nurses arrived to disconnect the mass of tubes and wires that sprouted out of various points on my body.
‘What are they all for?’ I asked.
‘Those in your neck include a monitor for measuring the blood pressure actually in your heart and lungs, a tube for taking antibiotics direct to the heart, and some pacemaker wires just in case your heart needed an electrical stimulus to make it pump. Then there are three separate tubes in your chest to drain away any excess fluid, a line in each elbow for intravenous infusions, a nasogastric tube that goes through your nose and down your throat to feed you, and a catheter in your bladder to assist urination.’
Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.
‘Plus, of course, the ECG electrodes that are stuck on your torso.’
Of course.
Everything was removed other than the single IV line in my right arm. According to the nurses, that was so I could receive any fluids and medication without the need for separate injections. I was all in favour of that.
‘Now it’s time to get you up and walking,’ said one of them.
They helped me first sit on the edge of the bed and then to stand up, one of them hovering on each side of me in case I keeled over. I didn’t, and I was soon walking around without any real problems other than the continuous throbbing that went all the way down my front where both the doctor and the knifeman had made their various incisions.
I was moved from the Critical Care Unit to a regular surgical ward on the ninth floor, where I was allocated a single room close to the nurses’ station.
‘For better security,’ I was told.
Security.
Thankfully, murder on a London street has not yet become so commonplace as to be unworthy of reporting. Therefore, with nothing in the media, I had to assume that my two assailants must be aware by now that they had failed to deliver a fatal blow.
They knew they had failed and, furthermore, they must believe I had seen their faces. So would they try again to complete the job and dispose of the witness?
I wasn’t at all sure that being in a single room was the most secure arrangement, especially as the door had no lock. I asked the nurses to leave the door open so I could see them at their desk and, more importantly, they could see me.
I also asked them to ensure that any visitors were announced and then accompanied unless I agreed otherwise, although, in fact, the nurses were all so busy that anyone could wander into my room unseen if they were careful to wait for the desk to be clear, as it was for at least half the time.
Indeed, my first visitor waltzed into my room, unannounced and unaccompanied, about an hour after I’d moved in.
‘It’s normally you visiting me in hospital,’ she said. ‘Not the other way round.’
‘Hello, my darling big sister,’ I said, smiling at her.
‘I told you to move away from Harlesden. It’s dangerous up there. Too many robberies. Can’t you live somewhere safer, like Richmond?’
‘Flats in Richmond cost more than twice those in Harlesden,’ I said.
‘There can be no price placed on one’s safety,’ she said with gravitas.
How true.
I decided against telling her that I wasn’t actually robbed of my wallet and watch, and that my attackers would have likely followed me all the way to Timbuktu if I’d lived there.
‘Nice room,’ Faye said, standing by the window and looking out at the spectacular view over London. She turned. ‘So what happened exactly? The policeman who called just said you’d been mugged.’
‘I was attacked by two men,’ I said in a deadpan voice, trying to play down the drama. ‘One of them held me while the other one stabbed.’
‘How many times?’ she asked.
I would have preferred not to tell her any of the grisly details as it would only make her worry, but I knew she wouldn’t stop asking until she got the answers she was after, and they would be better coming from me than from the doctors or the police.
‘Thirteen.’
‘Thirteen! Good God, Jeff, that’s unbelievable.’
‘You should see my chest and tummy. There are more stitches than in a fisherman’s jersey.’ I laughed.
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Faye said sternly.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘Be happy that I’m still here to laugh at all.’
She didn’t look very happy.
‘Have the police caught the men?’
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I said. ‘I hope they’re still looking for them.’
I wondered just how hard they were looking. After all, it was only an attempted murder, not the real thing. But my attackers had done their best to send me on a journey that would end six feet under, and they weren’t to know that Doctor Shwan would be on hand to open my chest in the nick of time to prevent it.
Surely they were equally culpable whether I had lived or died.
According to the law, as Quentin had said, the maximum term of imprisonment for attempted murder was life, the same as for succeeding, but, in reality, both the effort expended to apprehend and the sentences passed down on the guilty were usually much less.
‘How long are you going to be in here?’ Faye asked.
‘I should be out at the weekend. As long as I don’t develop an infection.’
‘Come and stay with us.’
‘Thank you, Faye, dear, but I’ll be fine at my own place.’
She tilted her head sideways and looked at me. ‘Are you sure?’